The trouble with Tablets

Over Christmas I succumbed and bought an iPad 2. It’s a great little gadget and I’m really enjoying both for business and pleasure… as are the kids.

On the weekend I decided to do some online shopping on the thing as I needed some new jeans. Pretty simple.

Now, I guess like most people, I do have a favourite little online store where I usually do my clothes shopping, it’s pretty basic but reliable; www.sambear.com.au.

Before I went to Sam Bear, I decided to do some comparison shopping (browsing) and hit www.myer.com.au. The site worked OK on an iPad, the prices were terrific but when it came to finding the right size and style, they’d completely sold out of the jeans I wanted. Sad (and frustrated), I left their site disappointed.

Then I surfed over to their direct competitor, www.davidjones.com.au. Again, the site looked OK on the iPad, but I couldn’t navigate to the men’s apparel section and I couldn’t figure out how to get there…

I sprang out my trusty laptop to see what was going on…

Sure enough, the navigation didn’t work properly on the iPad! They use what’s known as a ‘mouse hover state’ to reveal sub category menus. Obviously the problem for iPad owners is they can’t hover a mouse over the navigation, so they can’t get to the categories and products they want to.

That issue, coupled with a complete lack of an internal site search feature, meant that sadly for David Jones (and me) no sale was made that evening. Even though I’d whipped out the laptop, it was the principle.

Tail between my legs, I went to Sam Bear.

Sam Bear’s site doesn’t have any fancy bells and whistles like the others, but it never runs out of stock, works with an iPad and I was able to buy a couple of pairs of new jeans and a t-shirt in quick time without fuss.

I might add that their prices are a little more expensive, but it was worth it given the ease of the transaction.

Last year I blogged about the high conversion rates we see at our agency from people using iPads and with all the fuss over Myer’s and DJ’s foray into online shopping, I find it really disappointing that they (or DJs in particular) haven’t properly grasped mobile or tablet shopping.

In America online shopping from Tablet owners is tipped to reach $31 billion by 2016.

You’d expect these two to be the leaders in the online shopping/ecommerce space in Australia, but it looks like they’ve still got a ways to go.

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Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation  company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.